Actually, I view the Queen as a necessary part of the Collective. I think that any group of units like the drones, when joined together in a network, will create a single brain.

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Hmm. They were a collective consciousness at their inception - a vast collective operating as one unifed entity. It was impossible for us mere mortals to comprehend or visualise the overawing nature of such a thing. I felt The Queen removed some of that mystique and made them too comparable to us.

Actually, I view the Queen as a necessary part of the Collective. I think that any group of units like the drones, when joined together in a network, will create a single brain.

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Hmm. They were a collective consciousness at their inception - a vast collective operating as one unifed entity. It was impossible for us mere mortals to comprehend or visualise the overawing nature of such a thing. I felt The Queen removed some of that mystique and made them too comparable to us.

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How so? You admit it yourself, the Borg were "one unifed entity." Why is that mystique lost by any amount if that entity decides to control a physical body as a puppet?

In the past I've said enough already, lets have something new. But thinking on it the Borg are one of my favorite villains, I never got bored with them like I did the Klingons. kingDaniel's point about looking better (and scarier) is a good one. I'd like to see them again.

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I agree. The Klingons can stay in their mothballs of honourrrrrrrrrrrr for all I care, but if JJ wanted to bring back the Borg, I'd be all for it....as long as they're really threatening, like they were in First Contact.

If they have to recycle villains, let them pick the good ones. Of course, ymmv on who's a good villain and who is not....

If they're going to bring back the Borg, they need to be treated with respect. If they're supposed to be so fearsome, the writing needs to validate that idea, not undercut it.

Starfleet cannot be allowed to beat them except under very unusual circumstances, ie, the writers come up with a way for Starfleet to be astonishingly clever about it. And even then, this should happen rarely.

And assimilation is P E R M A M E N T. No more go-backs, no wiggle room. Allowing characters to be de-Borged just because they are main characters really undercuts the Borg's credibility.

And NO QUEEN!

Yeah that just about covers it.

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A self-defeating prescription.

If you make the borg have no chinks in its armor, it'll utterly crush the federation. No amount of 'clever' can overcome the HUGE advantages - in terms of military technology/intelligence and numbers - that the borg enjoys - without said chinks in its armor.The implausibility will become that it somehow fails to bitch slap the federation on an ongoing basis; more than enough to break the suspension of disbelief.

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The writers' job is to make this plausible, that's what they're getting paid for. If the Borg are going to continue to be wussified, then its best to ignore them. I just outlined the problem, it's not my job to come up with a solution. I know it's not an easy problem to solve without recourse to some silly contrivance like Q puts up a magic barrier to stop the Borg.

How about using the possibility that Founders cannot be assimilated - and Jem'hadar who are assmilated can be starved of k-white, which the Borg cannot manufacture - to make the Dominion the only power immune to the Borg? Which creates its own interesting problems for the Feds, out of the frying pan and into the fire...

As for the Queen, the problem is that she was invented to have some sexy babe harass Data in the movie, and it really had nothing to do with what makes the Borg interesting, namely their inhuman-ness.

They should be too indifferent to humans to bother creating a puppet with which to communicate - the way the Borg "communicate" is by assimilating your ass! - as as already mentioned, Queenie acted more like a individual than a puppet anyway. And why use the same puppet all the time? The Borg could assimilate a crew member and use that person as a puppet, that would freak the humans out real good.

Actually, I view the Queen as a necessary part of the Collective. I think that any group of units like the drones, when joined together in a network, will create a single brain.

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Hmm. They were a collective consciousness at their inception - a vast collective operating as one unifed entity. It was impossible for us mere mortals to comprehend or visualise the overawing nature of such a thing. I felt The Queen removed some of that mystique and made them too comparable to us.

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How so? You admit it yourself, the Borg were "one unifed entity." Why is that mystique lost by any amount if that entity decides to control a physical body as a puppet?

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Because it gives the Borg a leader and the Borg more scary and alien without a leader. There is no leader, no one Borg has more authority then another, having a Queen undoes all that. Introducing the Queen was the start of Borg's villain decay. Instead of hailing a Borg Cube and having a wall of Borg drones shouting at you, Janeway would often just be talking with the Queen on a view screen, which made the Borg seem like every other alien race out there.

Plus the Borg Queen was written as an idiot most of the time, she makes so stupid decisions in Unimatrix Zero, its hard to take the Borg seriously after that.

Hmm. They were a collective consciousness at their inception - a vast collective operating as one unifed entity. It was impossible for us mere mortals to comprehend or visualise the overawing nature of such a thing. I felt The Queen removed some of that mystique and made them too comparable to us.

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How so? You admit it yourself, the Borg were "one unifed entity." Why is that mystique lost by any amount if that entity decides to control a physical body as a puppet?

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Because it gives the Borg a leader and the Borg more scary and alien without a leader. There is no leader, no one Borg has more authority then another, having a Queen undoes all that. Introducing the Queen was the start of Borg's villain decay. Instead of hailing a Borg Cube and having a wall of Borg drones shouting at you, Janeway would often just be talking with the Queen on a view screen, which made the Borg seem like every other alien race out there.

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If my model of the Collective is correct, then the Queen is not a leader. Are you the leader of your brain cells? No, you ARE your brain cells, you are formed from the interaction of all of them. They are not separate to you, so you can't be a leader. If you are their leader, then they must be the follower, which requires them to be separate to you. And this obviously isn't the case.

I see it as the Queen representing the conscious mind of the Collective, with the lots-o-voices being the subconscious mind.

Plus the Borg Queen was written as an idiot most of the time, she makes so stupid decisions in Unimatrix Zero, its hard to take the Borg seriously after that.

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She's written as a spoiled brat, actually, which, when you think about it, is exactly what she is. An emotionally stunted little girl who wants everything her way right now. And as soon as she gets it, she doesn't care about anything else.

How so? You admit it yourself, the Borg were "one unifed entity." Why is that mystique lost by any amount if that entity decides to control a physical body as a puppet?

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Because it gives the Borg a leader and the Borg more scary and alien without a leader. There is no leader, no one Borg has more authority then another, having a Queen undoes all that. Introducing the Queen was the start of Borg's villain decay. Instead of hailing a Borg Cube and having a wall of Borg drones shouting at you, Janeway would often just be talking with the Queen on a view screen, which made the Borg seem like every other alien race out there.

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If my model of the Collective is correct, then the Queen is not a leader. Are you the leader of your brain cells? No, you ARE your brain cells, you are formed from the interaction of all of them. They are not separate to you, so you can't be a leader. If you are their leader, then they must be the follower, which requires them to be separate to you. And this obviously isn't the case.

I see it as the Queen representing the conscious mind of the Collective, with the lots-o-voices being the subconscious mind.

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No one brain cell has authority over others. There are no special brain cells that have more power then others. That's what the Queen comes off as. Your analogy doesn't work, the entire Borg Colletcive represents a physical body, the same way my brain is made up of brain cells that control my body. So the Borg "Queen does represent a brain cell that has authority over other brain cells, the Borg Collective itself would represent a human body that is controlled by individual brain cells, not the Queen.That is why your analogy just doesn't work.

The thing is the Borg Queen doesn't come off as the way you describe her, there several times where the Borg Drones are doing something and she orders them to stop it, like when the drones attacked Data in FC and the Borg Queen orders them to stop it. If the Borg Queen is just a physical representation of the collective mind, she should not need to order drones around.

Frankly the Borg collective mind is far more of a scary prospect, when it has no physical personification, it is more abstract concept, not something you see.

Frankly you really haven't come with something that makes the Queen necessary from a story telling stand point, what makes her an interesting villain, what does she add to the Borg as villains, rather then take away. All you have done is argued that it could be possible for the Borg to have a Queen, not she adds to Borg and how she is interesting in of herself.

Frankly I think she takes away more then she adds and I liked the Borg a lot better without a Queen.

She's written as a spoiled brat, actually, which, when you think about it, is exactly what she is. An emotionally stunted little girl who wants everything her way right now. And as soon as she gets it, she doesn't care about anything else.

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That's not a scary villain, having that character as the representation of the Borg makes them far less scary. Heck most of the best Borg stories, like Q Who, Scorpion, Best of Both Worlds, don't even feature her, so I don't see why she is needed.

No one brain cell has authority over others. There are no special brain cells that have more power then others. That's what the Queen comes off as. Your analogy doesn't work, the entire Borg Colletcive represents a physical body, the same way my brain is made up of brain cells that control my body. So the Borg "Queen does represent a brain cell that has authority over other brain cells, the Borg Collective itself would represent a human body that is controlled by individual brain cells, not the Queen.That is why your analogy just doesn't work.

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The queen is not a brain cell that has authority over the other brain cells. The Queen is the mind formed with all those brain cells connected together. The body she controls is just a puppet. The mind is completely separate. That's how she was able to survive when we saw her die all those times. The body was destroyed, but because her mind was spread throughout the entire collective, it was able to survive.

The thing is the Borg Queen doesn't come off as the way you describe her, there several times where the Borg Drones are doing something and she orders them to stop it, like when the drones attacked Data in FC and the Borg Queen orders them to stop it. If the Borg Queen is just a physical representation of the collective mind, she should not need to order drones around.

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True, but I view that as a representation for the audience so we know what was happening. I mean, technically, we shouldn't be able to see the beams of directed energy weapons like phasers - ever see a beam coming out of a laser pointer? But it's included as a representation so the viewer can see what is happening. With the queen, if everything was just in her mind, the viewer would have no way of knowing. We'd just see the drones attacking Data in FC, then suddenly stop, and we'd have no idea why. So they have her making some action so we know that she is the cause.

Frankly the Borg collective mind is far more of a scary prospect, when it has no physical personification, it is more abstract concept, not something you see.

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Maybe, but I don't think it has to be that way. Have a read of my novelisation of The Best of Both Worlds (link in my signature), and I think you'll see that the presence of the Queen makes it a much more effective story when it comes to showing how dangerous the Borg are.

Frankly you really haven't come with something that makes the Queen necessary from a story telling stand point, what makes her an interesting villain, what does she add to the Borg as villains, rather then take away. All you have done is argued that it could be possible for the Borg to have a Queen, not she adds to Borg and how she is interesting in of herself.

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I never said she is essential from a story telling point of view. I said that she is a natural extension of how I see the Borg as working - a natural extension of having all the drones connected together.

She's written as a spoiled brat, actually, which, when you think about it, is exactly what she is. An emotionally stunted little girl who wants everything her way right now. And as soon as she gets it, she doesn't care about anything else.

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That's not a scary villain, having that character as the representation of the Borg makes them far less scary. Heck most of the best Borg stories, like Q Who, Scorpion, Best of Both Worlds, don't even feature, so I don't even feature her, so I don't see why she is needed.

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But they could easily incorporate her. I've already done a novelization of the Best of Both Worlds that includes her, and I think it works very well. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you think it works.